Published 4:00 am, Sunday, December 30, 2007

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Antonio Villaraigosa, Los Angeles Mayor, speaks to shoppers, Nick McCargar, 14, with his father Dale McCargar, 47, at Hy-Vee grocery store as he campaigns in Iowa for Senator Hillary Clinton for Democratic presidential candidate. Photographed in Des Moines on 12/29/07. Deanne Fitzmaurice / The Chronicle Mandatory credit for photographer and San Francisco Chronicle. No Sales/Magazines out. less

iowa30_520_df.jpg
Antonio Villaraigosa, Los Angeles Mayor, speaks to shoppers, Nick McCargar, 14, with his father Dale McCargar, 47, at Hy-Vee grocery store as he campaigns in Iowa for Senator Hillary Clinton ... more

Photo: Deanne Fitzmaurice

State politicos stump in Iowa

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Armed with a briefing book and a scouting report the size of a small encyclopedia, Gavin Newsom - the mayor of very urban, very liberal San Francisco - found himself traveling for hours across an eerie landscape of ice-shrouded trees and tiny towns tucked into the endless snow-covered plains.

And the mission here for Newsom - a high-profile surrogate for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in the nation's most competitive political terrain - was to help deliver the gold: those elusive, undecided Iowa caucus voters who could make or break his candidate's presidential campaign.

He recalled just how tough it can be: A Des Moines house party hostess directed him to take off his shoes, sit on the couch, and start calling voters. But it was clear, he said, that they were hard to impress. Iowans are being wooed, day in and day out, by some very important people.

"We don't even consider a candidate unless they dry my dishes," the hostess told Newsom with a smile.

"She wasn't kidding," the San Francisco mayor said.

Yes, this is Iowa, where, with just days to go before the first votes of the 2008 presidential election on Thursday, the final frenzy to make the sale is on - and at the kind of intensely personal retail level that most Californians will never experience. Iowa, with just 2.9 million residents and a state budget smaller than the city of San Francisco's, has unusual clout, coming first in the parade of electoral events that will decide the nominees of the Republican and Democratic parties.

The San Francisco mayor was tapped by the Clinton campaign to travel here earlier this month to address voters on health care, preschool and gay and lesbian issues. But he was just one of several Californian politicos who've gone vote hunting in the far corners of the Hawkeye State as the crucial opening of the 2008 presidential race approaches.

Iowa this week is jammed with temporary immigrants from the Golden State, whether media types covering the madness, or campaign volunteers and staffers, or big name surrogates like Newsom.

For some of them, the experience can be both exhausting and surreal - but also unforgettable.

Newsom, in an interview, recalled how he charged from tiny middle school theater to weather-beaten Elks Club, from local bar to coffee art house, from Cedar Rapids to Fairfield to Solon, working phone parties and home gatherings, in the space of a few hours. It wasn't unusual, he said, to bump elbows with other prominent surrogates - like former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright - in comfy living rooms and at worn kitchen tables.

As a Democratic celebrity from the nation's most populous state, the San Francisco mayor's challenge involved sitting sometimes with a dozen voters on the fence, sometimes with just one. With the help of detailed briefing profiles - including individuals' occupations, concerns and even what they might ask ("she will want to know when Sen. Clinton will be back") - he tried to discern how he could best win them over.

The mayor said he answered their questions on everything from universal health care, to preschool programs, to more arcane stuff like, "What is Hillary Clinton's policy on MSG?"

"In some cases, I made the sale, and in some, it was almost impossible," a hoarse Newsom, fighting a cold, recalled last week. "I had one guy, it was almost an hour and a half. I couldn't break him. Every argument, I tried. I thought I had him on every point," he said.

Then, finally, the man told the mayor, "You're right, Clinton is better on every point."

"So you think you can help us?" Newsom asked.

"I'm still not sure," the man told Newsom apologetically.

The same challenges are now confronting San Francisco District Attorney Harris, who arrived this week with a suitcase stuffed with down coats and long johns from North Face, and a determination to take a few days off from battling crime to battle for Obama in towns like Knoxville, Indianola and Newton. As the candidate's co-chair for women and African American voters, Harris will have a full schedule, hitting churches and get-out-the-vote rallies with a mind to traverse Iowa and "do it all, phone banking, canvassing, knocking on doors and licking stamps."

Although the flat-as-a-pancake landscape couldn't be more different from San Francisco, Iowa's political landscape has many similarities, Harris said. In both places, local politics can be exhaustive and enormously challenging, and Iowa's regular voters, like those in San Francisco, tend to be engaged, aware - and very, very discerning.

"You can't get more retail in terms of politics than campaigning for office in San Francisco. The way we run, and win, campaigns is by being on the ground, shaking hands, and talking one-on-one with voters," she said. "Like San Francisco, Iowa has a tradition and history of taking politics seriously, of really being engaged. They're complex and intelligent enough to ask the first question, and then the second."

Villaraigosa, the Los Angeles mayor, discovered that for himself on Saturday, swathed in a long black cashmere coat and running from voter to voter in the parking lot of the Hy Vee Food & Drug Co. in Des Moines to buttonhole potential Clinton supporters.

He ran into Christie Vilsack, Iowa's former first lady, running out with a bag of black-eyed peas she planned to cook - "for luck" - for Clinton for the New Year. Villaraigosa slapped her on the back and headed into the store's produce section, where he energetically approached Brad Richardson, a research scientist at the University of Iowa, with his son Sam, 7, in tow.

"I'm doing this the old-fashioned way," he told Richardson. "I'm supporting Hillary Clinton ... because this is the most important election in my lifetime."

Richardson, a juvenile justice expert who recognized the Los Angeles mayor and invited him to an upcoming conference, said such Iowa visits by high profile politicians from afar are both illuminating and valuable.

"When you bring in people from the outside, it gets people thinking," he said. "It shines a bright light. In the end, local people do the voting, but the presence of national people is important."

Ng rode with reporters in a press bus from Chariton to Knoxville for five different events, admitting the schedule of all this excitement is sometimes daunting. "I'll admit not knowing what city I'm in at any given time."

Ng, like the rest of the Californians, has learned to live with the political challenges - and oh yes, the bone-chilling weather. "We drink a lot of hot chocolate," he said.

But Peter Ragone, a Democratic operative and aide to Newsom, said the discomforts are more than exceeded by the moments that make this the only place to be as the 2008 presidential campaign formally begins.

"You step off the plane, the trees are encased in ice and look like glass figurines, and you can see the cold in the air," he said. "It's a wet cold, and you drive across the plains and you can see how flat it is in the dark. And you get to a small town, and they have Christmas decorations in the town square, and a beautiful gazebo, and it's a Friday night and it's cold. And about a dozen people show up."

It is there, in those small groups, that American presidential politics finally gets down to business, said Newsom.

"There's a seriousness. They recognize what's at stake. You're talking about world peace here, not just cleaner streets," he said. "You have to connect with them on a human level. ... You can't get away with anything else."

Newsom said before he arrived, "I was a big city guy who walked into Iowa saying, 'What is this? It's crazy.'

"And I left saying, 'Thank you, Iowa. This is real.' "

The early voting

-- How Iowa's Jan. 3 caucus works:

There are no secret ballots. Caucus participants assemble according to political party in more than 1,700 precincts across Iowa where they discuss, debate and argue before make their selections, which are witnessed by other caucus-goers.

-- Why Iowa and New Hampshire are important:

Iowa and New Hampshire (which conducts its Jan. 8 primary election with traditional, secret balloting) have an enormous impact in shaping the presidential campaign. They are seen as crucibles for voter sentiment in large part because so much attention - from the candidates and the media - is focused on them. Winners or candidates who do well against long odds gain significant momentum. Losers, particularly ones regarded as front-runners, seldom recover.